On Magpies, on!

‘Well - that worst part is over. Tomorrow, to pack, & then onto the Road & away. Details, like lorries & portable pianos & car insurance, remain to be settled - but nought shall stay our triumphant flight. On Magpies, on!’ This is from a journal kept by the writer Iris Murdoch, born 100 years ago today, when still a young woman and touring with a group of actors called The Magpie Players. The diary, published posthumously, is said by its editor, Peter Conradi, to show ‘a person vividly alive and fascinated by her world, trying to make sense of it by writing it down, seeking to be in charge of her own destiny.’

Murdoch was born in Dublin on 15 July 1919. However, within weeks, her father took up a job in London, working at the ministry of health. She was educated at the Froebel Demonstration School, at Badminton School as a boarder from 1932 to 1938, and at Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied classics and philosophy. After leaving Oxford, in 1942, she worked for HM Treasury, until mid-1944 when she joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Initially stationed in London, she was transferred in 1945 to Brussels, then to Innsbruck, and finally to Graz, Austria, where she worked in a refugee camp. Subsequently, she took up philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge, before, in 1948, becoming a fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963.

Murdoch published her first novel - Under the Net - in 1954. In 1956, she married John Bayley, an English academic and literary critic. Though the relationship lasted the rest of her life, Murdoch is known to have had many affairs. She produced a new novel every one or two years - including The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961) and The Black Prince (1973) - some of which won literary prizes. Her greatest success came with The  Sea, The Sea which won the 1978 Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1994, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In 1997, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for ‘a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature’. She died in 1999, and later the same year Bayley released Iris: A Memoir (later turned into a film). Further biographical information is available online at Wikipedia, The Guardian (and here), The Irish Times, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The New York Times.

Murdoch kept diaries for much of her life. In Iris Murdoch: A Life (HarperCollins, 2001), the biographer Conradi explains that she left behind edited journals (1939-1996) ‘which constituted an invaluable resource, carrying her unique ‘voice’.’ Indeed, it seems, he was the first to have access to her journals, referring to, and quoting from them, generously throughout his biography. Many pages can be freely read at Amazon and at Googlebooks. In 2010, Conradi also published Iris Murdoch - A Writer at War: Letters & Diaries 1938-46 (Short Books, subsequently Oxford University Press, 2011). The diary extracts take up one third of the book, and cover the period in 1939 when she was on tour with a theatre group, The Magpie Players. A few pages can be previewed at Amazon, and reviews can be read The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent.

One of Conradi’s aims in producing this latter work, he says, is ‘to reclaim the living writer as she begins her adult life’. He explains: ‘Dame Iris in life so august, remote and intensely private, was in death unwittingly reduce to two opposed stereotypes: in vulgar language bonking (younger Iris) or bonkers (elderly Iris). If you’re American: screwing or screwy. Both sensationalisms reduced her to gross physicality, by-passing and demeaning the one thing about her that was truly remarkable - the freedom of her mind.’ He goes on to say: ‘The journal and these letters show her, by contrast, as a person vividly alive and fascinated by her world, trying to make sense of it by writing it down, seeking to be in charge of her own destiny. That she was disturbed by a troubled love-life does not prevent her being a role-model for young women today. Such experiences, which mark the growing-up of most of us, were to feed her strenuous moral philosophy and her fiction alike. And in these writings she walks and talks and lives once more.’

In 2017, Kingston University, London, announced that Audi Bayley, the widow of John Bailey, had gifted Murdoch’s private journals, covering the period from 1939 to 1996, and that consequently it now had ‘the most significant collection of Murdoch-related material in the world’. ‘These journals,’ a university press release said, ‘provide unparalleled insights in to [sic] the remarkable and complex life of a woman whose private and public personas were often at odds with each other. [. . .] A first glance at the journals revealed that some entries had been edited by the late author with phrases having been physically cut out of pages by Murdoch herself, [. . .] The second journal is missing and assumed destroyed as it spans the period during the Second World War when Murdoch was caught up in a controversial love triangle [. . .] The account of the first days of her marriage has also been removed. Among the collection is a journal from the 1980s which is packed with descriptions of domestic incidents and accounts of dreams. Most significantly, there are hundreds of cryptic comments on philosophy, theology, literature and the writing process itself.’

Here’s a selection of Murdoch’s diary entries as chosen/edited by Conradi: the first two long ones (August 1939) are taken from Iris Murdoch - A Writer at War: Letters & Diaries 1938-46, and the remaining short ones are all from page 274 in Iris Murdoch: A Life.

23 August 1939
‘Well, we did put on a show - but only just. We didn’t know our lines (some of us), our costumes weren’t finished, & held together with pins, parts of the scenery were unpainted, & we had to cut out chunks of the programme because it was under-rehearsed. But we put on a show & what’s more they liked it! 'The whole day was a glorious nightmare of sewing on clips & fasteners & buttons & bells, & drawing innumerable magpies on innumerable sheets of paper for innumerable purposes. Hugh & I took half an hour off after lunch & walked up to the meadow where the horses were & talked about the Party. I was amazed when he told me he had been in only a few months & there was I imagining him an Old Bolshevik. Hugh is full of surprises.

He makes a very good dead Cuchulain in the ‘Lay of the Heads’, and even shewed great enthusiasm for the part!

We were supposed to have a ‘Dress & Lighting Rehearsal’ at 3.30, but of course it did not materialise. At 3.30 I was just beginning Joan’s ‘Queen o’ fairies’ dress, & the bulbs for the spotlights hadn’t come! About 5 Joan and Hugh & I went and lay on the grass exhausted & Joan did the Times crossword & moaned about the political situation. The papers seemed scared & I suppose a grave crisis is on but I can’t seem to feel any emotion about it whatsoever. This is such a strange, new, different, existence I'm leading, & so entirely cut off from the world.’

About 6 o/c we rehearsed Tam Lin & it was appalling. Denys, of course, nervous creature, went off the deep end, & said O I wish we weren’t doing this! But I tried to reassure him, privately thinking he was quite right.

Tom almost lost his temper several times during the afternoon - quite unheard of. But Joan was magnificent & sorted all the costumes out, & was sweet to us when we rushed about & said Joan, where is that cloak? Joan, where are my shoes. . .

And at 8 o’clock there we were, Joan & Moira & I singing the theme song & trembling all over. ‘Julius Caesar’ was on first, & Moira told me afterwards it was terrible. Victor had to be prompted every other line, & she sang her song wrong. Alas. Then we did Tam Lim and it went wonderfully, never better. And they liked it!

Denys was exultant. (Joyce said afterwards my arm movements were perfect & reminded her of Peggy Ashcroft! I like that girl Joyce, she says the right things.) ‘Broomfield Hill’ didn’t get across so well, tho’ Joan’s dress was splendid, like a young parachute.

‘Clydewa’er’ was the hit of the evening tho’, with Hugh compering, & doubled the House up in laughter. Joan gave a fine little introductory speech to the ‘Lay of the Heads’ & it went down amazingly well. No one laughed! ‘The Keys’ also went far better than I’d expected. Hugh filled all the sceneshifting intervals with a brilliant & endless stream of songs & patter which the audience loved. First he was American & sang cowboy songs, then he sang in Welsh, then Irish & Scottish songs. The production went moderately smoothly, with only one major blunder, when Joan was left sitting alone in the middle of the stage for 3 minutes in ‘Donna Lombarda’, while Joyce & I desperately jabbed Denys’s costume as full of safety pins as a porcupine is of quills. The ‘Play of the Weather’ went well, tho’ Cecil said it was ‘a shaggy performance, just hanging together, with everyone inventing their lines for themselves.’ I think some of the audience were shocked at the bawdier parts, tho’ the curate in the back row whom we’d fixed on as a test case, laughed heartily thro’out.

Well - that worst part is over. Tomorrow, to pack, & then onto the Road & away. Details, like lorries & portable pianos & car insurance, remain to be settled - but nought shall stay our triumphant flight. On Magpies, on!’

27 August 1939
‘[Water Eaton Manor] A peaceful day. We left Northleach with mingled relief & imprecations, after the men had been well rooked by a charming but villainous robber of a Youth Hostel warden. And, as a grand finale, Joyce had her purse stolen. O Northleach, Northleach we shall pass this way but once! We went to Water Eaton via Shipton-under-Wychwood, & left our big props & the trailers behind there. Water Eaton is a fine Elizabethan manor belonging to Prof. Carr Saunders, the London university population expert. We weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms by the professor & his lady. Not exactly. But we found Frances was there with her two harps - so that compensated for a slight aloofness on the part of the family & a noticeable scarcity of basic nourishment. We wandered the gardens, lay on the grass, & Tom talked vaguely of rehearsing this & that. My opinion of everyone in the company is going up by leaps & bounds with 2 exceptions. Tom & Jack. Tom really is maddening. He refuses to make up his mind, and when he does make it up, he won’t tell anyone. He was well served this afternoon, for as a result of his not divulging what ballads we were going to rehearse, half the company went off in a punt & left him fuming. Actually it was mean of them too to wander off without a word, & I ticked Joyce & Moira off about it when they came back. Frances played her harp in the family chapel & I came & sang softly to it, & happily we passed the day. At 6 we gave a show to the Carr Saunders & aristocratic & arty friends. It was beautiful to do Tam Lin out of doors in such a superb setting, & it went well. Tom wrecked Donna Lombarda by too early an entrance, but on the whole all was delightful.

After the show Hugh & I wandered down to the Cherwell which flows thro’ meadows below the house, & sat & watched the moon rise. A group of white swans sailed silently past. It was a most magical evening. Hugh lay down beside me with his head touching my side, & I sat and looked across the river. Then gradually we gave expression to what had been tacit between us for several days. There is something incredibly tender & gentle about Hugh, for his all terrific strength & bluffness.

I went back late to the house to find Moira & Joan had been waiting for me. They then took Joyce & me in the car to the people we were to stay with in Yarnton. Both Joyce & myself, by some unlucky change had lost our cases, & were in great distress. However, we survived the night. We were staying with a hearty old couple, good working class stock, but unintelligent. The star of people who are nice to you when you come canvassing, bu who will not buy a copy of the ‘Daily Worker’ as they ‘already get the Herald, thank you very much.’

13 December 1948.
‘I need a strongbox to keep this damn diary in. Probably I ought to destroy all the entries of the last 3 weeks. Why am I unwilling to? . . . Must root out the weak desire for an audience (the lurking feeling eg that I write this diary for someone - E[lizabeth], P[hilippa], D[onald], or X, l’inconnu, I still believe in l’inconnu -? ). Way to sincerity, a long way.’

30 January 1949.
BS [unidentified] lectured me on politics & the old nostalgia stirred, part conscience, part guilt, part sheer romanticism and part sheer bloody hatred of the present set-up. To no end, but it stirred. It occurs to me that I entertain the idea: ‘One day I shall return to the party’, and the idea ‘One day I shall join the Roman church’ like two escape valves. It is not that I am utterly unserious about them - but they not held close, but part of some far project ... Thought later: what marks one out as a confined person, with no dimension of greatness? Some lack of sweep, some surreptitious idolatry. In my case, I feel there must be some will to please which is on my face like a birthmark. Who lacks this smallness? D[onald], and Pippa [Philippa], unconfined people, and E[lizabeth] too.’

18 May 1952.
‘Looking back in this diary. What an unstable person I seem to be ... I shall be to blame if I don’t build now where I know it is strong, in the centre, through loneliness. (Aloneness) ... I wrote today on the top of my lecture paper: marriage, an idea of reason!’

14 June 1952.
‘There is a lot which I don’t put into this diary, because it would be too discreditable - & maybe even more painful. (At least - no major item omitted but certain angles altered - and painful incidents omitted.)’

27 October 1958.
‘The instinct to keep a diary: to preserve certain moments for ever.’

Crossed a singular slough

‘Started about sunrise, crossed a singular slough. Crossed a hard bottom covered knee deep with liquid black stagnant marsh mud, through which the men waded.’ This is from a diary kept by Simon Newcomb, an American astronomer, written on the way back to Boston from Manitoba where he had gone to observe a total solar eclipse. Newcomb, who died 110 years ago today, is considered to have been the most honoured American scientist of his day. He seems to have kept some diaries, but only a few extracts have been published - including the one above - and these can be found online in a short paper in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Newcomb was born in the town of Wallace, Nova Scotia, in 1835, the son of a school teacher who moved around teaching in different parts of Canada. Aged 16, he was apprenticed to Dr. Foshay, supposedly a herbalist. But, after serving two of his five years with the quack, he ran away, walking most of the 120 miles to Calais, Maine, from where he worked his passage on a boat to Salem, Massachusetts before reuniting with his father. He taught and tutored for several years in Maryland and near Washington, studying all the while, especially maths and astronomy. In 1857, he was appointed a functionary in charge of calculations at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he also enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, graduating BSc in 1858.

In 1861, Newcomb became professor of mathematics and astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, Washington D.C., where he set to work on the measurement of the position of the planets as an aid to navigation, becoming increasingly interested in theories of planetary motion. He married Mary Caroline Hassler, daughter of a US Navy surgeon, in 1863, and they had four children.

In 1867, Newcomb published a revised value for the solar parallax (one which remained standard until his own revision in 1895). That same year, he first suggested the importance of determining an accurate velocity of light as a means to obtaining a reliable value for the radius of the earth’s orbit. With this aim, he started experiments in 1878, for a while collaborating with Albert Michelson. In 1877, Newcomb was appointed superintendent of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac Office. He launched a programme to reform the entire basis of fundamental data involved in the computation of the ephemeris - a monumental task, but one he eventually completed.

Newcomb authored a large number of papers on almost every branch of astronomy. He also published several mathematical textbooks as well as astronomical books for a popular audience, including Popular Astronomy (1878), The Stars (1901), and Astronomy for Everybody (1902). He was a founding member and first president (1899-1905) of the American Astronomical Society. He served as president the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1876-1878), president of the American Mathematical Society (1897-1898), and member (1869) and vice president (1883) of National Academy of Sciences. According to Encyclopedia.com he was ‘the most honoured American scientist of his time’ and ‘his influence on professional astronomers and laymen was unparalleled’. He died on 11 July 1909. Further information is also available from Wikipedia, MacTutor, National Academy of Sciences, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and Newcomb’s own memoir The Reminiscences of an Astronomer.

The Library of Congress holds an archive of Simon Newcomb papers, among which are included ‘Diaries and Commonplace Books, 1852-1918’; but no further information is provided. Arthur L. Norberg says, in his essay on Simon Newcomb’s Early Astronomical Career (Isis, vol. 69, no. 2, 1978) that ‘the Newcomb diaries and correspondence allow us to reconstruct the details of Newcomb’s life from this period;’ and he footnotes the diaries several times. Otherwise, the only other published reference to diaries kept by Newcomb can be found in a paper by Kennedy, J. E. & Hanson, S. D for the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (Vol. 90, p.292 - 1996) - available online at the Astrophysics Data System website.

The abstract to that paper reads as follows: ‘In I860 Simon Newcomb journeyed from Boston to Manitoba to observe a total solar eclipse. A microfilm copy of Newcomb’s Diary for the trip, along with a typescript, is held by the University of Saskatchewan Archives. Wherever entries appeared of relevance to astronomy or contained supplementary information about the trip to view the eclipse, they have been included here as excerpts. The scientific data on the Sun, which Newcomb and his party planned to obtain at totality, were summarized in a newspaper account by a reporter who accompanied them on a segment of their travels. Newcomb endured extreme hardships during his hazardous journey and clouds prevented him from viewing to his satisfaction the totally eclipsed Sun.’ And here are several of those excerpts.

11 June 1860
‘Talked with Mr. Inkster of Ft. Garry ... was informed by him that canoes were sometimes delayed on the lake whole days by storms.’

25 June 1860
‘Arrived at Fort Garry at 10 1/2 o’clock a.m. Found Gov[ernor] Mactavish, who said that we should have to get our boat &c. at the “lower Fort,” 22 miles down. Opened our instruments, and took out sextant & spy glass. (Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had instructed William Mactavish. Governor of Assiniboia and officer-in-charge of Upper Fort Garry, to provide whatever assistance the eclipse party required in carrying out their scientific pursuits. Mactavish arranged for their transportation, albeit in a leaky canoe, as well as provisions, a guide and paddlers for the two crossings of Lake Winnipeg. On their return to Fort Garry, Mactavish then arranged for the party’s return by wagon-train over the plains to St. Paul.]’
 
27 June 1860
‘Sent Kippling out in the morning to offer £3 10s each for canoe-men. In the afternoon, he returned stating that the middlemen wanted £4 10s each, and the bowman £5 10s. We shall probably have to engage four middlemen & a bow[ma]n at these rates.’

28 June 1860
‘Spent the forenoon in getting our provisions and equipment for the trip. Cost, including wages, [£]260. Started for Cumberland House at 3 1/2 p.m. in Sir George Simpson’s North canoe. Encamped at sunset, near the house of Peguis, Indian chief after whom we named our camp. Canoe still leaking. Comet fainter.’

29 June 1860
‘Started soon after sunrise. Had to stop every 1/2 hour and bale out canoe. Arrived at Lake Winnipeg at 8 3/4 a.m. A meteor in the evening in N.N.W. left a tail behind it which lasted 45 minutes, and moved 15° toward west.’

9 July 1860
‘Opened instruments this morning, and observed altitudes of Sun. Found chronometer to be fast of local time by 1h 48m 13s, and Latitude] to be 52° 4' 9" ±3". Tried to observe Polaris, but could not, owing to the badness of the mercury.’

17 July 1860
‘Men still paddling, but rather sleepy, they make very slow progress owing to the swiftness of the current. In the afternoon clouds and rain, and every appearance of a cloudy morning for the eclipse.’

18 July 1860
‘Eclipse morning. Cloudy till eclipse was 1/4 way through. End of totality at 8h 15m 0s per chronom[eter] of eclipse at 9h 15m 23s.2. Emersion of elongated spot at 9h 1m 34s. Darkness not so great as I had expected. Cirrus clouds luminous in the N.E. during totality. Took observations for time and Latitude with difficulty owing to the unsteadiness of the ground. Went to The Pas in the afternoon.’

24 July 1860
‘Men paddled all last night; arrived at Cedar Lake House between 2 and 3 a.m. Ran down to the portage, arriving there early in the forenoon. Had portage finished by about 10 o’clock. Arrived at the mouth of the Saskatchewan before 2 p.m.’

8 August 1860
‘Awakened after 5 a.m. by the landing of the boat. Found that we were 2 or 3 miles past Willow Is[land]. Arrived at the mouth of the Red River at 10 a.m. Started up the river at 11 1/4 with side wind. Passed many Ind(ian] lodges. Arrived at Stone Fort, (or Lower Fort Garry) at 7 1/2 p.m.’

9 August 1860
‘Slept last night at Fort, in civilized bed. At 8 a.m. started for Fort Garry on foot, arriving at 1 1/2. Roads were very bad the first few miles. Found that steamboat had not arrived, or been heard from, though she was due Saturday last. Wrote an account of our voyage for the Nor’Wester. Stopped at Royal House. Mr. Lilly up to-night.’

28 August 1860
‘Started about sunrise, crossed a singular slough. Crossed a hard bottom covered knee deep with liquid black stagnant marsh mud, through which the men waded. Camped alongside an Indian or other circular mound 30 feet in diam[eter] & 4 high. Place is called Snake Hill, and the river Snake River.’

12 September 1860
‘Arrived at Anoka shortly after 11 a.m. From there walked very slowly, and got into stage about 3 1/2 o’clock, about 3 miles above Manomin. Arrived at St. Paul about dark, went to P.O., and got a letter from Capt. Davis, enclosing draft for $89. Capt. D[avis] had written to Mr. Terry expressing apprehension for our safety. Called on Gov[ernor] Ramsay.’

13 September 1860
‘Went on board the steamboat Alhambra (stem wheel boat) at 8 a.m. Boat aground frequently.’

He distorted body parts

‘Wolverton was a master in caricaturing the human face and body. He distorted body parts while multiplying others. Noses hang on necks, ears stick out of eye sockets, teeth point out in all directions, skins droop to the ground and virtually everyone has blisters or freckles. His characters seem to be made from plasticine rather than bones.’ This how a comic encyclopaedia describes the work of Basil Wolverton, born 110 years ago today. He was one of America’s great mid-20th century comic artists, working for Stan Lee’s (pre-Marvel) Atlas Comics, and for MAD in its early days. But he was also very religious and produced many a biblical illustration. He kept diaries for a year as a child and then regularly during the second half of his life. Although these have not been published, they have been exploited by Greg Sadowski in his recent two-volume and highly illustrated biography of Wolverton.

Wolverton was born on 9 July 1909 in Central Point, Oregon, but his family later moved to Vancouver, Washington. His parents, though religious, divorced when he was a teenager. An older sister died around the same time, which led the young Wolverton to abandon his faith for a decade or more. Aged 11, he drew a weekly cartoon of famous comic characters to sell at the local farmers’ market, and aged 16 he sold his first nationally published work. His comic strip, Marco of Mars, was accepted by the Independent Syndicate of New York in 1929 though it was never distributed.

Wolverton made a living as a vaudeville performer for a time, with a special act where he sang in a baritone voice, played ukulele and tap danced. Other income came from his job as a journalist/cartoonist for the Portland News. He was baptized into Herbert W. Armstrong’s Radio Church of God in 1941 and was ordained as an elder in 1943. As a board member of the church, he was one of six people who re-incorporated the church in 1946 when it moved its original headquarters from Oregon to California. Later, he drew many illustrations for Armstrong’s religious publications, and then for The Plain Truth. But, in the comic world, he was building up a portfolio of clients: his first major success came with Powerhouse Pepper, from 1942 to 1948, a humorous boxing series. In 1946, he won a competition in Life Magazine which brought his name to a wider public.

Lambiek Comiclopedia gives this assessment: ‘Wolverton was a master in caricaturing the human face and body. He distorted body parts while multiplying others. Noses hang on necks, ears stick out of eye sockets, teeth point out in all directions, skins droop to the ground and virtually everyone has blisters or freckles. His characters seem to be made from plasticine rather than bones, but Wolverton knew how to draw it all with a sense of fun, elegance and innocence.’ It was only a tiny step, the encyclopaedia adds, for him to go from monstrous faces to drawing actual monsters and extraterrestrial aliens. In the early 1950s, he drew many and varied horror and science fiction stories for Stan Lee’s Atlas Comics (preceding what would become Marvel Comics) as well as for the comic books published by Stanley P. Morse. And, in 1952, he was among the pioneering artists working for Harvey Kurtzman's new satirical magazine MAD. Later in his career, Wolverton illustrated several covers for Joe Orlando’s satirical comic book Plop! (DC Comics, 1973-1975), and in 1974 he turned briefly to self-publishing. He suffered a stroke that same year, and died in 1978. Some further biographical information can also be gleaned from Wikipedia and Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr’s Illustrators.

Recently, in 2014, Fantagraphics released the first volume of an illustrated biography of Wolverton’s life - the most comprehensive biography ever published, it claims: Creeping Death from Neptune - The Life and Comics of Basil Wolverton (Volume 1: 1909-1941). The second volume, Brain Bats of Venus: The Life and Comics of Basil Wolverton (Volume 2: 1942-1952) is due to be published this coming autumn.

Throughout both books - authored by Greg Sadowski - there is a liberal sprinkling of extracts from diaries Wolverton kept at different points in his life. The first volume, for example, draws on a childhood diary. It was given him for Christmas in 1923, and, Sadowski says, ‘sheds light on his time in high school and his advancing interest in Christianity, cartooning, scientific magazines, vaudeville, and movies’. In it, he writes of 'escapades with his friends, which include building tunnels with secret passages, diving oft piers, and spying on wandering drunken men, with public intoxication being particularly scandalous during the Prohibition era.’ Several pages can be read online at Googlebooks, Amazon and Issuu. Wolverton didn’t resume keeping a diary until 1941, but when he did would write down each day’s events, occasionally punctuated with a wry remark. He kept up the habit for the next 30 years. Sadowski notes that from 1941 onwards his biography of Wolverton is ‘anchored’ by the diaries. Further information on the forthcoming second volume can also be found at Googlebooks and Amazon. (Incidently, the original comic Brain Bats of Venus can be viewed online at Internet Archive.)

Here are several extracts from Wolverton’s diaries as found in the two volumes.

24 December 1923
‘Hello folks, my name is Basil Wolverton and the first writing in this book was put here Dec. 24, 1923, the night before Christmas. I live in Vancouver, Washington. I have one sister, one mother, one father and no brothers. Thus only four in the family. I was born in Central Point, Oregon, July 9, 1909. I am now fourteen years old.

I got all my Christmas presents tonight and I sure am happy. I got a necktie, a pair of arm bands, a pair of swell gloves with gauntlets, a Tarzan book, two pounds of plaster paris, a hair brush, this diary book, two dollars, and some candy. I think that’s a good bunch of swell presents.’

1 January 1924
‘I ate a lot of dinner and then went to the show and laughed so much at the comedy that I’d of liked to split the front of my shirt and the seat of my pants and maybe my collar or my stockings. The comedy was so funny that I was behind in my laughs when funny things came along and I didn’t get to laugh enough at everything, but when I got home I made up tor it by laughing a lot.’

6 July 1924
‘Great lapse of time. Pardon me for leaving out so much of my diary but I have forgotten and neglected to write it. Well, it is summer and school has just been out for a month. Therefore only two months left. I went to Sunday School and Church today. I have been working in the cannery. I have earned sixteen dollars in seven days. I guess all the work is over now. I went to the show yesterday that is the second show in 1924.’

29 July 1925
‘Seven months is quite a long time. It is almost August already, and vacation is going fast I was elected president of the Lower Junior Class for the coming semester and will be president of the Upper Juniors during the last semester. I am sixteen years old now. Mom wanted to take her trip back East this summer but there is not enough money. I thought sure we were going to get to take it but I guess now we are not. I worked a little over a month now in the cannery, right after school and earned $96.88, which helps a little bit.

I am now trying to sell my cartoons to some syndicates. I made a few strips and called them Simple Simon and These Modern Inventions, and sent them to the King Features Syndicate at New York. The King Features Syndicate sent them to the International Feature Syndicate, just a block away. They both had no use for the cartoons, so sent them back and I made some more, only they were not in strip form but were just one big picture, and were called Funny Features. I made a four line verse to go with each of them and then sent them off to the N.E.A. Service at Cleveland, Ohio. I haven’t got them back yet, though. I sent them sixteen days ago. This mornings mail hasn’t come yet; they might be coming this morning.

Dad has been gone for about six weeks. He lives in Portland now. I will go out and saw some more wood and then come back and write down whether my pictures came this morning.

My pictures are coming tomorrow, I guess. I got a letter today saying that the syndicate had no use for them. C. N. Landon of the Landon School of Cartooning is the art director of the syndicate, so of course he wants me to take a course in his school, and then I’ll get a job. I won’t do that but I’ll make eight more pictures and send them to another syndicate.’

23 February 1942
‘First enemy shells (from submarine off California coast) landed on U.S. continent in this war. One wonders what will happen a week, a month, or a year from now.’

Early March 1942
‘Phone rang at 3:35 A.M. Was dreaming of air raid. Phone call was from Warden Farrell: alert alarm. I dressed and dashed over to Ben Wells’ place. Couldn’t rouse him. Went to Bettesworth’s place and got him up. Reported to Farrell. He told me to rout out neighbors who might help. I went after Frank Wanamaker and called Sollie. Then all-clear signal came. Went back to bed.’

Understand it, and love me

Havelock Ellis, an early British sexologist who wrote the first medical tract on homosexuality, died 80 years ago today. Given his own lack of experience in sexual matters, it remains a quirk of sociological history that he should have become such a pioneer in opening up discussion of sexuality and sexual problems. Intriguingly, he left behind some personal diaries but they have never been edited or published. In his own autobiography, for example, he says of one diary, ‘perhaps someone some day would read it, and understand it, and love me’.

Ellis was born in Croydon (now part of Greater London) in 1859. His father was a sea captain; and, aged seven, he was taken on one his father’s voyages. He attended the French and German College near Wimbledon, and afterward attended a school in Mitcham. In 1875, Ellis sailed with his father to Australia where, soon after his arrival in Sydney, he obtained a position as a master at a private school. But he was soon fired (for he had no qualifications) and became a tutor for a family for a year before obtaining a position as a master at a grammar school. Subsequently, he undertook training and was given charge of two government schools.

In 1879, however, Ellis returned to England where, having decided to study the subject of sex, he enrolled at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School to become a physician. He funded his studies by editing literary works, and with a small legacy. He joined The Fellowship of the New Life in 1883, through which he met a range of social reformers. And the following year he was part of the group that set up the Fabian Society. It was also in 1884 that he met Olive Schreiner with whom he had a long friendship.

Ellis published his first books - The Criminal and The New Spirit - in 1890. Soon after, he met Edith Lees who had been much impressed by The New Spirit. They married in 1891, though from the first the marriage was unconventional: they lived in separate homes, and Lees was openly lesbian. In 1897, the English translation of Ellis’s book Sexual Inversion, co-authored with John Addington Symonds and originally published in German in 1896, became the first English medical textbook on homosexuality. Many further books about sex followed, although, as many commentators have noted, this was somewhat ironic since he himself was almost totally inexperienced.

Between 1897 and 1928, Ellis published seven volumes of his Psychology of Sex - considered a comprehensive and groundbreaking encyclopaedia of human sexual biology, behaviour, and attitudes. However, publication and dissemination of the first volume, Sexual Inversion, incited opposition in the UK, not least through a court case against a bookseller. As a result of the controversy, the remaining six volumes were published in the US. But, even across the Atlantic, sales were restricted to members of the medical profession (not till a change in the obscenity laws in 1935 were they allowed on general sale). Ellis’s work helped to foster open discussion of sexual problems, and he became known as a champion of women’s rights and of sex education. He was also a supporter of eugenics, and served as vice-president to the Eugenics Education Society. His other notable books include Man and Woman (1894), The Task of Social Hygiene (1912), and The Erotic Rights of Women (1918). He died on 8 July 1939. Further information can be gleaned from Wikipedia, Spartacus Educational, the Embryo Project Encyclopedia, or the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Ellis’s autobiography - My Life - was published soon after his death (Houghton Mifflin, 1939, and William Heinemann, 1940). It can be read freely online at Internet Archive. In Chapter Three, Ellis discusses a diary he kept for a while: ‘The Surrey left London on April 19th, 1875. From this date, and during the four years I spent in Australia, I kept a diary in a solid manuscript book purchased to this end, so that for the approaching formation period, when nearly all the seeds of my life’s activities were sown, I could if I please - though I have not done so - check my recollection by the entries in this intimate contemporary record. Except Olive Schreiner, none has ever read this diary, not even my wife, though it contains nothing I had any wish to hide from her; but to Olive, with her large tolerance and her active intellectual receptivity, it seemed in 1884 easy and natural to me to bare my inner self. I sometimes think that with increasing years and ill health she has become less tolerant, less receptive, but we have long been separated by all the waves of the Atlantic.’

And then, 100 pages further on Ellis says this: ‘Though in the published volume of Olive’s Letters so many extracts from those to me are given, I may perhaps now give a few further fragments from letters, early and late, having a more intimately personal reference to myself. Even before the end of 1884 we were living in an atmosphere of familiar nearness, and in November of that year, when ill in bed, she wrote: “I am not sure as to where you begin and I end.” A little later, when she had been reading my Australian diary in which I had put down that perhaps someone some day would read it, and understand it, and love me (Olive is still, more than half a century after it was written, the only person who has read it), she writes: “And then I was living just like you on a lonely farm, and at night when my work was over going out to walk under the willow trees or on the dam walls and I used to think ‘One day I must find him.’ ” ’

But this is not the only diary Ellis kept. Houston Peterson refers to diaries kept by Ellis in his 1928 biography Havelock Ellis: Philosopher of Love. In reviewing this, Margaret Sanger stated: ‘The excerpts from the early notebooks and diaries, which Havelock Ellis began at the age of ten, are especially interesting.’ The State Library of New South Wales holds some of Ellis’s diary material. It refers to ‘Diary 1875-1890’ with the following notes: ‘A few pencil notes by Henry Havelock Ellis in early part of diary appear to have been made some years later, only 1 is dated (page 99). Many entries in later part of diary refer to Olive Schreiner’; and, ‘The diary records mental and spiritual experiences, not day to day occurrences. A condensed account of these experiences, with comments, appears in his My Life, 1940 espec. pages 91-103.’ The Library also makes reference to six volumes of ‘commonplace books’. However - and unfortunately - none of Ellis’s diaries have ever been edited or published.

Purpose into my life

‘She put purpose into my life - the life of a spoiled bachelor congressman who was also a successful trial lawyer and a hero of the last war who tended to be too carefree and frivolous. In 11 years I jumped from congressman to President.’ This is Ferdinand Marcos, the president of the Philippines, writing in a diary about his wife, Imelda. Marcos was soon to introduce martial law, and the couple’s increasingly lavish lifestyle would also lead to them both being reviled. Although Marcos died in exile 30 years ago, Imelda returned to the Philippines eventually, continued a political career, and is celebrating her 90th birthday today.

Imelda Remedios Visitacion Romualdez was born on 2 July 1929 in Manila, Philippines. She was the oldest child of her father, a lawyer, and her mother, a dressmaker, though she had older siblings by her father’s earlier marriage. Her mother died when she was nine, and her father moved the family back to his own home city of Tacloban in the province of Leyte. She attended Holy Infant School from 1938 to 1944. She was crowned a local beauty queen when aged around 18. While studying at the Divine Word University, also in Tacloban, she taught at a local Chinese high school. She also enrolled for a while at a college of music. In the early 1950s, Imelda moved to Manila to live with a cousin who was a politician. She worked as a sales girl before her relatives found her a job at the Central Bank. She also came joint first in a Manila beauty contest, and continued singing lessons.

In 1954, Imelda met Ferdinand Marcos, a member of the House of Representatives, and 11 days later they were married in a small civil ceremony. Over the next decade or so, they had three children, and established themselves as one of the country’s most important political couples. In 1965, Ferdinand Marcos was elected president, and glamorous Imelda was likened to John Kennedy’s wife Jacqueline. However, the couple’s popularity started to wane as Marcos, in his second term, declared martial law, and Imelda’s spending on lavish projects seemed out of control. Chief among their critics was opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr, an old friend of Imelda’s. He was imprisoned, and then exiled to the US. Despite warnings from Imelda, he risked a return to the Philippines in 1983 but was assassinated by government forces at Manila airport.

When an election was called in 1986, opposition to Marcos rallied around Aquino’s widow, Corazon. Although Marcos claimed victory in the elections, the military withdrew its support from him when evidence of massive voting fraud emerged. The Marcos couple fled to Hawaii, and an extraordinary collection of shoes left behind by Imelda came to symbolise the excesses and corruption of the Marcos regime. Marcos died in 1989, and Imelda was subject to various ongoing embezzlement and graft charges (in the US and Philippines). However, she eventually made a return to her home country, where she unsuccessfully campaigned for president. She did win a place in Congress between 1995 and 1998, and was again elected to congress in 2010 and 2013. In 2018, she was convicted of seven counts of graft and sentence to 42 years in prison, though it is considered unlikely she will see any jail time (given her age, and the appeal processes). Further information is available from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, Biography.com, The New York Times.

Although I can find no evidence that Imelda Marcos kept a diary, her husband certainly did, from the beginning of 1970. His manuscript diaries appear to have been left behind when the Marcos couple went into exile, and were discovered at the Malacañang Palace. They then found their way, mysteriously it seems, into the hands of the American journalist William C. Rempel, who then based a book on them: Delusions of a Dictator: the mind of Marcos as revealed in his secret diaries (Little, Brown, 1993).

In a 2013 article for Rappler, Rempel says this: ‘It was nearly 25 years ago that I got my first look at the diary of Ferdinand Marcos. I was an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times when about 3,000 pages of diary and other presidential papers were delivered to me in instalments - on street corners, at a restaurant, in the lobby of an office building - all very cloak-and-dagger. The documents were a journalist’s gold mine. I found bribery receipts and coded accounting reports recording official corruption. There were poems and love notes to First Lady Imelda and the Marcos children interspersed among Ferdinand’s plans for repression and dictatorship. The diary itself contained the president’s private musings about power and his messianic calling to “save the Philippines” from an exaggerated threat of communist insurgency. Here, too, was compelling evidence of Marcos plots against political rivals, the press, and anyone who dared to criticize his administration. But what caught me most by surprise were the lies - blatant, bald-faced, and occasionally comical. It turns out that while Ferdinand Marcos was lying to the world and to the Philippine people, he was also lying to his own diary.’

Rempel maintains his own website, but there is very little activity on it, nor is there any further information about the diaries. The celebrated Filipino historian Ambeth Raymundo Ocampo is said to be editing the diaries for publication, and he has spoken in public about them on several occasions. A selection of extracts from Marcos’s diary can be found online at the Inquirer.net; and even more can be found at The Philippine Diary Project. The diary extracts provided by The Philippine Diary Project come from ‘xeroxed copies of the diaries’ that were ‘written in longhand, more often than not, on official stationery.’ Indeed, alongside the transcribed diary extracts, it includes images of the diary pages. The following extracts, all mentioning Imelda, come from The Philippine Diary Project, except for those dated 2 and 12 June 1972 which I’ve taken from Inquirer.net.

13 January 1970
‘Imelda has a mass in the right breast and worries us because the doctors say that while there has been no change, an operation to remove it and to find out if it is malignant may be necessary.

I am suffering from pain in the right groin after golf. I hope it is not hernia. I see the doctor tomorrow.

And we were on a project to have another baby, a boy if possible. Massive injections of hormones for Imelda is necessary if we are to have a baby and this is not good for her growth in the breast which might develop into something serious with these hormones.’

19 January 1970
‘Imelda is strong enough to play host to her crowd nightly. We have just eaten Chinese lugao and lumpia brought in by Joe and Betty Campos. I liked most the bajo or powdered beef tapa and the seeweed for the lumpia. It is now 11:00 PM. Last night we went to bed at 11:30 PM. Read De Gaulle’s war memoirs up to 1:30 P.M. after writing my diary.

I must soon write my war memoirs while the events are still fresh in my mind.’

2 June 1972
‘Imelda is suffering from pain and from a deep sense of loss and sorrow for the abortion about which I have told her. She feels inadequate and has been crying her eyes out.

I have shed no tears for my unborn child, but I have vowed that I shall cure this sick society that has brought about the anguish of my wife, which caused the abortion. For the media has been vicious - it has condemned for a crime not charged, foisted gossip as truth and disregarded the rights of fair and impartial trial.

And this sick man who has committed perjury, libel and bribery has done me at least one favor. He has opened my eyes to this illness of our society that may yet destroy it. And my duty and mission is now to cure that illness.’

12 June 1972
‘Imelda and I have been reminiscing in bed - the long tortuous road from Congress to the presidency, the sacrifices, her tears, pain and hard work that went into our struggle for power.

She put purpose into my life - the life of a spoiled bachelor congressman who was also a successful trial lawyer and a hero of the last war who tended to be too carefree and frivolous.

In 11 years I jumped from congressman to President.’

17 September 1972
‘We escaped the loneliness of the palace for this old Antillan house now known as Ang Maharlika, the State Guest House several blocks from the palace. It has been restored beautifully by Imelda and is a symbol of Philippine culture in the last century. Almost all our antique valuables have been transferred here.

The departure of our children has made the palace a ghostly unbearable place.’

21 September 1972
‘Delayed by the hurried visit of Joe Aspiras and Meling Barbero who came from the Northern bloc of congressmen and senators who want to know if there is going to be Martial Law in 48 hours as predicted by Ninoy Aquino.

Of course Imelda and I denied it.’

22 September 1972
‘Sec. Juan Ponce Enrile was ambushed near Wack-Wack at about 8:00 pm tonight. It was a good thing he was riding in his security car as a protective measure. His first car which he usually uses was the one riddled by bullets from a car parked in ambush.

He is now at his DND office. I have advised him to stay there.

And I have doubled the security of Imelda in the Nayon Pilipino where she is giving dinner to the UPI and AP as well as other wire services.

This makes the martial law proclamation a necessity.

Imelda arrived at 11:35 PM in my Electra bullet proof car to be told that Johnny had been ambushed, it is all over the radio.

Congress is not adjourning tonight as the conference committee on the Tariff and Customs Code could not agree on a common version. They adjourn tomorrow.

I conferred with Speaker Villareal, Roces, Yñiguez and Barbero who are going to Moscow and they are ready to leave on Sunday. So they are decided to finish the session same.

Senate President Gil Puyat insists that the next special session be early January.

And they will not be able to pass the urgent bills like the rehabilitation bill.’

23 September 1972
‘Things have moved according to plan although out of the total 200 target personalities in the plan only 52 have been arrested, including the three senators, Aquino, Diokno and Mitra and Chino Roces and Teddy Locsin.

At 7:15 PM I finally appeared on a nationwide TV and Radio broadcast to announce the proclamation of martial law, the general orders and instructions.

I place them in Envelope XXXV-C

I was supposed to broadcast at 12:00AM but technical difficulties prevented it. We had closed all TV stations. We had to clear KBS which broadcast it live. VOP and PBS broadcast it by radio nationwide.

The broadcast turned out rather well and Mons. Gaviola as well as the [illegible] friends liked it. But my most exacting critic, Imelda, found it impressing. I watched the replay at 9:00 PM.’

Two nebulae in Leo

‘I ‘swept’ last night two hours, by three periods. It was a grand night - not a breath of air, not a fringe of a cloud, all clear, all beautiful. I really enjoy that kind of work, but my back soon becomes tired, long before the cold chills me. I saw two nebulae in Leo with which I was not familiar, and that repaid me for the time.’ This is from the diary of Maria Mitchell, an early American astronomer, who died 130 years ago day. She earned worldwide fame by discovering a comet, and later became the first female professional astronomer in the US.

Mitchell was born in Nantucket, an island of the coast of Massachusetts, in 1818 into a large Quaker family (10 children). Her father was a teacher with a strong interest in maths and astronomy. For a while, he had his own school, where Maria studied and helped out, but when it closed she attended a local minister’s school for young ladies, and helped out there too. When Maria opened her own school - aged only 16 - she allowed non-white children to attend. In 1836, though, she went to work as the first librarian for the newly launched Nantucket Atheneum - a position she held for 20 years.

On the night of 1 October 1847, Mitchell discovered Comet 1847 VI (modern designation C/1847 T1) which later became known as Miss Mitchell’s Comet. Under her father’s name she published a notice of her find in Silliman’s Journal the following January, and subsequently submitted her calculation of the comet’s orbit, ensuring her claim as the original discoverer. She won a prestigious gold medal from Denmark for the discovery. This brought her fame, but also helped establish the importance of American astronomy, previously looked down on by the Europeans. She became the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850. She also contributed to the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, calculating tables of positions of Venus.

On leaving the Atheneum in 1856, Mitchell travelled in the United States and in Europe. She was appointed professor of astronomy at the newly established Vassar College in 1865 where she had access to a twelve-inch telescope, the third largest in the US. She defied social conventions by allowing her female students out at night for class work and celestial observations, and she brought noted feminists to speak on political issues. She taught at the college until her retirement in 1888. She had never married; and she died on 28 June 1889. Further information is available from the Maria Mitchell Association, Wikipedia, or the National Women’s History Museum.

Mitchell kept a diary for much of her life, although the only extant manuscripts date from September 1854. After her death, her youngest sister, Phebe Mitchell Kendall, used them extensively for her biographical work: Maria Mitchell - Life, Letters and Journals (Lee and Shepherd, 1896). This is freely available online at Internet Archive; and an appreciation of her journals can be found at Brainpickings. More recently, Henry Albers has published a similar biography - entitled Maria Mitchell: A Life in Journals and Letters (College Avenue Press, 2001) - with many quotations from the diaries. Some pages of this can be read at Amazon. According to Albers, the Maria Mitchell Association holds about 70 of Mitchell’s notebooks (containing letters, diaries, speeches and classroom lectures as well as visiting cards, articles on astronomy, et.). He also notes that Phebe used several quotations from diaries kept by her sister that are no longer extant, i.e. those prior to September 1854.

The following extracts are all taken from the 1896 biography of Mitchell by her sister.

19 February 1853
‘I am just learning to notice the different colors of the stars, and already begin to have a new enjoyment. Betelgeuse is strikingly red, while Rigel is yellow. There is something of the same pleasure in noticing the hues that there is in looking at a collection of precious stones, or at a flower-garden in autumn. Blue stars I do not yet see, and but little lilac except through the telescope.’

11 May 1853
‘I could not help thinking of Esther [a much-loved cousin who had recently died] a few evenings since when I was observing. A meteor flashed upon me suddenly, very bright, very short-lived; it seemed to me that it was sent for me especially, for it greeted me almost the first instant I looked up, and was gone in a second, - it was as fleeting and as beautiful as the smile upon Esther’s face the last time I saw her. I thought when I talked with her about death that, though she could not come to me visibly, she might be able to influence my feelings; but it cannot be, for my faith has been weaker than ever since she died, and my fears have been greater.’

2 March 1854
‘I ‘swept’ last night two hours, by three periods. It was a grand night - not a breath of air, not a fringe of a cloud, all clear, all beautiful. I really enjoy that kind of work, but my back soon becomes tired, long before the cold chills me. I saw two nebulae in Leo with which I was not familiar, and that repaid me for the time. I am always the better for open-air breathing, and was certainly meant for the wandering life of the Indian.’

22 September 1854
‘On the evening of the 18th while ‘sweeping’ there came into the field the two nebulae in Ursa Major which I have known for many a year, but which to my surprise now appeared to be three. The upper one (as seen in an inverted telescope) appeared double headed like one near the Dolphin, but much more decided than that. The space between the two heads being plainly discernible and subtending a very decided angle. The bright part of the object was clearly the old nebulae but what was the appendage? Had the nebula suddenly changed, was it a comet, or was it only a very fine night?
Father decided at once for the comet, I hesitated with my usual cowardice and forbade his giving it a notice in the paper.

I watched it from 8.30 to 11.30 almost without cessation and was quite sure at 11.30 that its position with regard to the neighboring stars had changed. I counted its distance from the known nebula several times but the whole affair was difficult, for there were flying clouds and sometimes both nebula and comet were too indistinct to be definitely seen.

The 19th was cloudy and the 20th the same with the variety of wearisome breaks, through which I could see the nebula but not the comet.

On the 21st came a circular and behold Mr. van Arsdale had seen it on the 13th but had not been sure of it until the 15th on account of the clouds. I was too well pleased with having really made the discovery to care because I was not first.

Let the Dutchman have the reward of his sturdier frame and steadier nerves.

Especially could I be a Christian because the 13th was cloudy and more especially because I dreaded the responsibility of making the computations nolens nolens [willy-nilly] which I must have done to be able to call it mine. . .

I made observations for three hours last night, and am almost ill to-day from fatigue; still I have worked all day, trying to reduce the places, and mean to work hard again to-night.’

25 September 1854
‘I began to recompute for the comet, with observations of Cambridge and Washington, to-day. I have had a fit of despondency in consequence of being obliged to renounce my own observations as too rough for use. The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.’

24 November 1854
‘Yesterday James Freeman Clarke, the biographer of Margaret Fuller [a journalist and editor associated American transcendentalism, and an advocate of women’s rights], came into the Atheneum. It was plain that he came to see me and not the institution. . . He rushed into talk at once, mostly on people, and asked me about my astronomical labors. As it was a kind of flattery, I repaid it in kind by asking him about Margaret Fuller. He said she did not strike any one as a person of intellect or as a student, for all her faculties were kept so much abreast that none had prominence. I wanted to ask if she was a lovable person, but I did not think he would be an unbiassed judge, she was so much attached to him.’
 
16 December 1855
‘All along this year I have felt that it was a hard year - the hardest of my life. And I have kept enumerating to myself my many trials; to-day it suddenly occurred to me that my blessings were much more numerous. If mother’s illness was a sore affliction, her recovery is a great blessing; and even the illness itself has its bright side, for we have joyed in showing her how much we prize her continued life. If I have lost some friends by death, I have not lost all. If I have worked harder than I felt that I could bear, how much better is that than not to have as much work as I wanted to do. I have earned more money than in any preceding year; I have studied less, but have observed more, than I did last year. I have saved more money than ever before, hoping for Europe in 1856.’

Plant hunting in America

‘Nothing, as far as the eye could perceive, but mountains such as I was on, and many higher, some rugged beyond any description, striking the mind with horror blended with a sense of the wondrous works of the Almighty. The aerial tints of the snow, the heavenly azure of the solid glaciers, the rainbow-like hues of their thin broken fragments, the huge mossy icicles hanging from the perpendicular rocks with the snow sliding from the steep southern rocks with amazing velocity, producing a crash and grumbling like the shock of an earthquake, the echo of which resounding in the valley for several minutes.’ This is from a diary kept by the much admired Scottish botanist, David Douglas, born 220 years ago today. In a short life - he died in his mid-30s - he discovered hundreds of plant species in North America, and introduced many of them to Britain. His name has also been given to an important evergreen conifer - Douglas fir - as well as to scores of scientific names of plant and animal species.

Douglas was born in Scone, very near Perth, Scotland, on 25 June 1799, the second son of a stonemason. He attended a local school, and was then apprenticed, aged 11, to the gardener at Scone Palace, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield. After seven years in this position, he went to study at a college in Perth. In 1817 he moved to work in the gardens of Sir Robert Preston, at Valleyfield in Fife, where he was given access to an extensive botany library. Three years later Douglas took up a post in the Botanical Gardens of the University of Glasgow. Here, his potential was recognised by the Professor of Botany, Sir William Hooker, and the two mounted a number of botanical expeditions into the Highlands together.

In 1823, Douglas was recommended by Hooker to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) for an expedition to America to collect plants. He spent the latter half of that year in Philadelphia. The RHS were pleased enough with his notes and seeds to send him back, with sponsorship by Hudson’s Bay Company, this time to the Pacific northwest. He arrived in Fort Vancouver in April 1825, and travelled inland to Hudson Bay, which he reached in 1827.

In 1830, Douglas returned for a third trip, to explore California and the Fraser River region, stopping in Hawaii on the way. He returned to Hawaii in December 1833, intending to remain there only a few months, but he was still there in July when he met his death, being gored in a trap by a wild bull. He was only 35. Douglas is credited with discovering many new animal and plant species, not least the Douglas fir which bears his name. He introduced several hundred plants to Great Britain and hence to Europe; and eighty species of plants and animals have douglasii in their scientific names. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, Discovering Lewis & Clark, the Oregon Encyclopaedia, or The Douglas Archives.

In 1914, the RHS finally published, what it called, Journal kept by David Douglas during his travels in North America 1823-1827 together with a particular description of thirty-three species of American oaks and eighteen species of pinus. The book, freely available at Internet Archive, is a medley of journals, letters, memoir material, and scientific lists of species with descriptions. There are diaries from each of the three different trips Douglas made to America, but it is the journal of his second trip that takes up the bulk of the book (more than 200 pages of 350 in total).

Here is how the RHS secretary, W. Wilks, explains, in a preface, why it took so long to publish Douglas’s diaries:

‘Many causes have contributed to the delay which has taken place in the publication of the Diaries of David Douglas’s journeys on behalf of the Royal Horticultural Society :—
1. The handwriting is nowhere easy to read, and in places is most difficult, occasionally almost if not quite impossible.
2. In the course of nearly one hundred years the ink has faded and become in places very hard to decipher.
3. After the Diary of his journey in North Western America had been prepared for the press and set up in type, a second manuscript was discovered which was at first sight taken to be a duplicate, but which on closer examination was found to contain a great deal of additional information. It had therefore to be compared word for word with the Diary and the additions inserted in their proper places.
4. All the botanical names mentioned have been very carefully looked up by Mr. H. R. Hutchinson and the name given to the plant in Index Kewensis or by other later authority is quoted at the bottom of the page with a reference to the author responsible for it.
5. Last, but by no means least, the work was entrusted to the Secretary of the Society and to Mr. Hutchinson, the Librarian, each of whom had already more work in hand than he could conveniently compass, and only occasional spare time could be given to a work which had already waited nearly one hundred years for publication before it was committed to their charge.’

The following extracts are all from the first journal, except for the last which is from the second.

3 June 1823
‘LONDON: left Charing Cross by coach for Liverpool. Morning very pleasant; had rained through the night, country very fine for seventeen miles from the metropolis; found during time of changing horses Conferva egerops (Ball) confer. Beautiful fields at Woburn Abbey tastefully laid out and divided by hedgerows in which are planted Horse-chestnuts (Aesculus Hippocastanum) at regular distances, ail in full flower; had a very imposing appearance. Menyanthes nymphoides, for the first time I ever saw it in its natural state. Northampton at 2.30 o’clock p.m., rested 25 minutes; reached Lancaster quarter to 10 p.m., took supper, started again half past 10, rain during the night; very cold. Arrived at Liverpool 4 o’clock afternoon. After calling on Messrs. Monal & Woodward and learning that the Ann Maria of New York was to sail the following morning, in which a passage had been taken for me, I arranged my business as to my departure and made for Botanic Garden. Mr. Shepherd received me in the most handsome manner; showed me all his treasures (of which not a few were from North America).’ 

6 June 1823
‘On board at 9 o’clock A.M. in tow of two power steam-boats, which left 15 miles down the channel; we made but little progress, wind being rather contrary.’

2 August 1823
‘The ship this morning was all in an uproar, in consequence of a horse, which one of the passengers had, being looked on as dying; it cost him £200 in England, and after troubled passage the poor man lost his horse. At 12 o’clock saw light at Sandy Hook.’

3 August 1823
‘Four o’clock A.M. saw more of the New World. Every face seemed to feel glad, and at 7 A.M. took a pilot on board; at 10 passed the floating light lately erected, the Captain of which came on board of the Ann Maria; 4 o’clock passed the Nourain waspe, and the other forts on the right and left; half-past 4 cast anchor and considered ourselves at land; 5 o’clock boarded by the Health Officer, who signified that fourteen days of quarantine was requisite in consequence of small-pox; at 6 o’clock went on shore on Staten; returned to the vessel at 7.’

11 August 1823
‘Early this morning I went to the vegetable market, the Fulton. It had a beautiful appearance, beet of superior variety and fine carrots, raised in this country; I observed a very great deficiency of cauliflower, indeed they were miserably poor; onions were fine, mostly red; the immense supply of melons and cucumbers - the latter of which, however, were not so fine as may be expected and appeared for the most part to be the same as the short prickly ones cultivated in England - the melons were fine. An abundant supply of early apples, pears, peaches - the two former were fine, but the peaches looked rather bad, being ripened immaturely and the trees being sickly; immense varieties of squashes or gourds, plums, early damsons, a great supply of pineapples from the West Indies, and cocoanuts. I observed a fine head of Musa sapientum which weighed 40 lb. At 8 o’clock this morning we set off for Flushing and visited the establishment of Mr. Prince. I found him a man of but moderate liberality; he has some good specimens of Magnolia, of Berberis Aquifolium, a few European plants, common shrubs and herb plants. Indeed on the whole I must confess to be somewhat disappointed, for his extensive catalogue and some talk had heightened my idea of it; but most of his ground is covered over with weeds. I was much pleased with the beautiful villas on the banks of the Sound; saw people employed in preparing their operations for diving to the Hussar, a British frigate taken during the late war.’

1 January 1824
‘On the morning of the New Year, I had the gratification of seeing the rocky shores of Cornwall and with a continued steady wind came to an anchorage off Dover on Saturday morning.’

***

1 May 1826
‘This morning our fire that was kindled on the snow had sunk into a hole 6 feet deep, making a natural kitchen. Minimum heat 2°, maximum 44°, on the highest part of the big hill. Started at daybreak, finding the snow deeper and the trees gradually diminish towards the summit; laborious to ascend. Went frequently off the path in consequence of not seeing the marks on the trees, being covered with the snow. Reached the top at ten, three miles, where we made a short stay to rest. Course north-east. Descended in the same direction and came on the river which we left two days before. Passed in the valley two small level spots clear of wood and one low point of wood of small trees, Pinus nigra and P. Banksiana, where we camped at midday, being unable to proceed further from the deep soft snow. Progress seven miles. Mr. E. killed on the height of land a most beautiful male partridge, a curious species; small; neck and breast jet black; back of a lighter hue; belly and under the tail grey, mottled with pure white; beak black; above the eye bright scarlet, which it raises on each side of the head, screening the few feathers on the crown; resembles a small well-crested domesticated fowl; leaves of Pinus nigra in the crop. This is the sort of bird mentioned to me by Mr. McLeod as inhabiting the higher parts of Peace and Smoky Rivers. This, however, is not so large as described. Perhaps there may be two varieties. Said also to be found in Western Caledonia. This being the first I have seen, could not resist the temptation of preserving it, although mutilated in the legs and in any circumstances little chance of being able to carry it, let alone being in a good state. The flesh of the partridge remarkably tender when new killed, like game that has been killed several days; instead of being white, of a darkish cast. After breakfast at one o’clock, being as I conceive on the highest part of the route, I became desirous of ascending one of the peaks, and accordingly I set out alone on snowshoes to that on the left hand or west side, being to all appearance the highest. The labour of ascending the lower part, which is covered with pines, is great beyond description, sinking on many occasions to the middle. Half-way up vegetation ceases entirely, not so much as a vestige of moss or lichen on the stones. Here I found it less laborious as I walked on the hard crust. One-third from the summit it becomes a mountain of pure ice, sealed far over by Nature’s hand as a momentous work of Nature’s God. The height from its base may be about 5500 feet: timber, 2750 feet; a few mosses and lichen, 500 more; 1000 feet of perpetual snow; the remainder, towards the top 1250, as I have said, glacier with a thin covering of snow on it. The ascent took me five hours; descending only one and a quarter. Places where the descent was gradual, I tied my shoes together, making them carry me in turn as a sledge. Sometimes I came down at one spell 500 to 700 feet in the space of one minute and a half. I remained twenty minutes, my thermometer standing at 18°; night closing fast in on me, and no means of fire, I was reluctantly forced to descend. The sensation I felt is beyond what I can give utterance to. Nothing, as far as the eye could perceive, but mountains such as I was on, and many higher, some rugged beyond any description, striking the mind with horror blended with a sense of the wondrous works of the Almighty. The aerial tints of the snow, the heavenly azure of the solid glaciers, the rainbow-like hues of their thin broken fragments, the huge mossy icicles hanging from the perpendicular rocks with the snow sliding from the steep southern rocks with amazing velocity, producing a crash and grumbling like the shock of an earthquake, the echo of which resounding in the valley for several minutes. On the rocks of the wood were Menziesia caerulea; Andromeda hypnoides; Lycopodium alpinum; L. sp. unknown to me; dead stems of Gentiana nivalis; Epilobium sp., small; Salix herbacea; Empetrum nigrum, fruit in a good state of preservation underneath the snow; Juncus triglumis; J. biglumis, with a few Musci, Jungermanniae and lichens.’

Society in Salem

‘We now have seriously the Cold of Winter. The Therm, at Zero. Politics become more sour as the severity of winter increases.’ This is the Reverend William Bentley, born 260 years ago today, writing in the diary he kept for most of his life. He served as a church minister in Salem, Massachusetts, and was much involved in the local community. His diary is a gossipy, informative read, covering a wide range of news acquired from his own observations/conversations as well as from the newspapers - indeed his diary is considered an ‘invaluable compendium’ of social and political observations.

Bentley was born in Boston on 22 June 1759, son of a ship’s carpenter, though as a child he lived with his well-off grandfather, a miller. He studied at academic schools, learning Greek and Latin, before entering Harvard College aged 14 where he studied oriental languages. He graduated in 1777, and started to teach at Boston while continuing his studies. He also tutored at Harvard itself, and preached at local churches. In 1783, he began to serve as a minister of East Church in Salem, a position he retained for the rest of his life. From 1794, he contributed a weekly news summary for William Carleton’s Salem Gazette, and he continued doing so until 1817. He also contributed regularly to the Essex Register and the Essex Gazette. He learned many languages, was said to be fluent in seven, and amassed a private library of over 4,000 volumes. In 1805, while planning the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson invited Bentley to be its first president, however the offer was declined.

Bentley travelled extensively, maintained active memberships in a fire club, a military unit and a Masonic Lodge. He also helped organise and support a number of music societies and was founder of the East India Marine Society. Indeed, his personal inventory of artefacts and curiosities later became the foundation for the society’s museum collection. Among his many friends, he counted James Winthrop, a fellow Harvard alumnus. Bentley never married but boarded for more than 20 years with Hannah Crowninshield. He tutored her niece as well as others. He received an honorary Doctorate of Sacred Theology from Harvard in 1819, and died later that same year. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Salemweb, Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, and Harvard Library.

Bentley was an avid diarist - indeed he is even listed in some places as a diarist and a minister. He kept his diary from 1785 until his death. SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) says it ‘is an invaluable compendium of gossip, shipping news, vital statistics, social and political observations, and petty miscellany, in the period of Salem’s prominence as a major commercial center.’ The Diary of William Bentley D.D. was first published - as far as I can tell - between 1905 and 1911 in four volumes (1785-1792, 1793-1802, 1803-1810, 1811-1819) by the Essex Institute (in Salem). All four volumes can be freely accessed at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts from volumes one, three and four.

1 March 1790
‘Drafted a Petition in favor of Capt Ashton, &c. to Selectmen of Salem, remonstrating against the State of the New Road, leading to Essex Bridge.’

2 March 1790
‘The Federal District Court for the first time opened this day in Salem. The Hon: John Lowell, Judge.[. . .] The Judge addressed the Jury in an excellent manner, & Revd Hopkins prayed.’

3 March 1790
‘The Jury sat all last night upon a Seizure & could not agree, & were dismissed this morning. Mr Phippen buried two children in one procession, the first instance within my own knowledge. Both carried in Chaises. Another Jury was collected from the Town who decided upon the short entry, & whether the entries at the State Offices were valid for the Continental Office after the Constitution of the States took place, but before the appointment of officers, & decided both points at once without hesitation. Such are our Juries, & this is the specimen given to us at the first Court, in which Mr. Parsons of Newbury seems to have an unbounded influence.’

4 March 1790
‘A Chimney belonging to Capt J. Gardiner took fire, it being a very windy day, & it burnt with great fury. It has communication with one of your Open Stoves called Philadelphian. This shows the need of these Franklin Stoves, in which by lamina over & under which the smoke passing into the Chimney, the soot is detained in the Stove, & can be cleansed from the lamina upon which it lodges. The Ventilator on the side makes the passage easy for the smoak.’

5 March 1790
‘General Catalogue of Social Library in Salem, as taken from L. Books [appearing in the original is here omitted.]. This Catalogue is taken almost literally from the Catalogue shewn me in the Library by Master Noyes (& tho’ it is very badly arranged), being short, it may be read over in a few minutes. The Library has been collected for some time. There have been no additions to it since the War, deserving of notice. In the War a Library including Phil. Transactions, &c. was taken, going to Canada, which has laid the foundation of a distinct Philosophical Library & this is the object of present attention.’
 
16 December 1807
‘A man named Benjamin Brown, attempting to pass from a boat on the flat to the shore, fell into one of the mud holes dug for the wharves & perished last evening. He was heard but assistance could not be afforded him seasonably. Mr. Chandler who keeps the school near the Branch for proprietors, was at B. B. this evening. This is the fourth year. The first Master Rogers, then Tappan. Tappan has a school at the other end of the town among his particular friends. A new School is projected. A Master’s School for Misses in the fine arts. This is also to be a School for Subscribers like the three Schools in this town under Knap, Tappan & Chandler. I do not know how far it has progressed.’

17 December 1807
‘Mr. B. Brown was interred this evening. As soon as the body was found it was conveyed to the Charity House as the body of a stranger. But his Brethren of the sea refused the Charity & with their usual generosity insisted upon his regular interment at their own expense. They went to the full extent of the funeral charges & no refusal, tho’ repeated, would allow me to dispense with my silk gloves under any pretences. I accepted & gave them to the family of the Sexton. The Seamen were present in remarkable good order & 153 of them accompanied the procession & afterwards returned with it to the house in which their deceased friend lived. I never saw a more happily conducted act of friendship & sympathy.’

5 January 1808
‘We now have seriously the Cold of Winter. The Therm, at Zero. Politics become more sour as the severity of winter increases. Why the Embargo? say all. Some reply, because of France. Some of England. Some hope it will make the administration unpopular. Others wish to complain but they dare not give the opposition so much pleasure. Where interest prevails & patriotism is little known, we can hope nothing from the latter without some present hopes of the former. Prosperity has been at the helm & has corrupted us. Integrity cannot command, without hazard, that obedience will be refused. Failures are expected & the Nat[ional] Int[elligencer] tells us that the daring speculations of individuals deserve to be exposed & prevented. The embargo is general. The attempt to exempt the Fisheries, tho’ supported by all the members from Massachusetts, was unavailing.’

11 February 1808
‘Another melancholy occurrence in English street. A Mrs. Buchanan, alias Getchel, alias Lane, was in the afternoon setting before the fire with a child in her arms, in a fit of intoxication. The child fell from her arms into the fire & before aid was obtained the child was past recovery. The woman has always been thought below the ordinary character of her sex & her habits were known from the difficulty of rousing her. It is an aggravated evil as her numerous & deserving relatives feel more than the insensible fool who has brought disgrace & shame. As this is the second burning to death this season & the first season in which any such thing has happened it is more interesting to notice it. In the former case no suspicion attached itself to the event.’

7 September 1810
‘The Census of Salem is now before the world & the increase has been rapid indeed. So that their own blood which has flowed in our veins has not been unfavourable to increase, activity, powerful attraction. The Negroes have not increased, the worst part of our population, as Men without trades, tyes, & tribute must be. I impute the decrease to the number of sober citizens, & not without property, who finish the life of a seamen in the little offices of labourers & who have character, property, & ability enough to deserve attention.’

22 May 1815
‘A sad alarm at the Post Office. Long suspicions have ended in discovery that the late Robbery of the Mail was done in the Office. One of the Lads has been detected. Everything is done to conceal the matter & the boy is admitted to bonds. Had circumstances been different we should have found the treatment different. The public mind will soon require a change in this office. Lookers out may be found. Some of our Prisoners have returned from England & report between 5 & 6 thousand. Above two thousand of these are to be found among the Impressed men, when the wretches who talk much of integrity have reported to the State a less number than has been found in Salem, only one town upon a coast of several hundred miles. The vilest policy could not venture upon greater insults to the understanding of men.’

29 May 1816
‘I went this morning to see the Elephant now on a visit to this town. I went in the morning when I might examine him without any of the tricks he has been taught to play. I saw nothing pleasing in the form or wonderful in his endowments. His surprising volume will be contemplated with astonishment. His place in Creation is yet to be assigned. Mr. Dane told me he had seen an Ox of 3 th. pounds who was a much nobler animal to survey but that enormous volume did not give but half the weight of this Animal tho it gave 3/4. of its height & not much short of its length. The Elephant is 13 feet round the body. What must our mammoth be?’

12 June 1816
‘Saw on the neck for the first time Rock Splitting at the great Rocks near the Causeway, neck side. First, an entrance was made by a long handled pick much like that used upon mill stones, squared to a point. Then the holes were made by a flat chisel tapering to a point. Then the wedges, four inches long, were put in between pieces of iron hoop & drove home bv a large iron maul. At both splittings the wedges were driven only twice & caused a fracture of more than two feet square in the hard black rock of the neck. The person at work said the Danvers rocks were not so hard, & did not make that ringing under the chisel which he called like pot metal. In few seasons have we heard more hitter complaints against cold weather than since June has come in, tho the winter & the whole season, if I may judge from the woodpile, has been as moderate as 1 have ever known. We shall soon hear complaints of heat.’

13 June 1816
‘Our fishermen have had good fares upon the Banks but think as something is always wanting, that they should have done better had they been permitted to fish nearer the shores. Five fishing vessels with 40 hands including men & boys returned to Province town, point of Cape Cod, with 1000 quintals each. Marblehead begins to revive & having a staple will out step us in Salem if we do not move quicker, says the people of Salem.’